How to Prioritize Workouts When Work Life Gets Tough

How to Prioritize Workouts When Work Life Gets Tough

Holding down a consistent, effective workout routine and pushing yourself further isn’t exactly easy even when you don’t have your career or other obligations to worry about, but when you actually do it’s a whole different story. Exercise is something that takes energy, motivation and planning, and if you skimp on any of these it’s very easy to get distracted and fall behind with your workouts.

I’m a working mom and have been so ever since my children were born, so I know full well how challenging it can be to keep up with all your daily tasks, take care of the kids, get everything done at the office and then still find time to exercise after all of that, but I assure you that it’s not impossible. And today, I want to give you some basic, simple tips on how to achieve just that.

Make Workouts More Efficient

The main problem that people with full-time jobs have when it comes to exercise is finding the time to exercise every day, or even three times a week. However, a simple way that you can remedy this is to simply increase the intensity of your workouts, so you can burn more calories and make more progress in smaller amounts of time.

High-intensity interval training is a great way to accomplish this, for example; it’s a style of training that’s designed to tire your body out as efficiently as possible in as little time as possible, and besides this it has a variety of other benefits: it contributes to a strong immune system, as well as to the secretion of anabolic hormones, which is great for muscle growth. HIIT also impacts your nervous system, conditioning it to handle more stress so you can lift more weight.

Stick to a Schedule

When being limited by time, you have to have a well-structured plan on how to use it efficiently. Period. The reality is that a lot of the people that claim they have no time to work out actually have lots of free time – they just aren’t trying to utilize it properly and make time.

Now, I understand that it isn’t always easy to create a specific plan because things can always come up at work, but if you have no plan whatsoever and make it up as you go along you’ll be far less prepared when something does come up. Having everything on paper makes all of this vastly easier, so I highly recommend that you do it.

Choose Exercises That You Like

As I mentioned already, exercise doesn’t only take up your time – it also requires a great deal of motivation and energy, and therefore it will be a lot easier to keep up with a consistent workout routine if it’s comprised of exercises you actually enjoy doing.

Whether it’s yoga, running, weight training, martial arts or anything else, make sure that you’re personally committed and that you care about pushing your limits and making progress, because without that key motivational factor it will be a lot harder for you to do so. On my own example, I can tell you that I despise running; it’s monotonous, boring and not stimulating enough in my personal opinion, and yet when I first started working out I used to spend 15 minutes before every workout on the treadmill, hating every minute of it but convinced that I need to run if I want to lose weight.

Then a friend introduced me to HIIT and I haven’t stepped on a treadmill since. I simply don’t need it, and I don’t feel like doing it, period. Pick your battles, make sure you enjoy your workouts, and things will become a whole lot easier.

Time For War – Gym & Workout Motivational Speech – WATCH FREE:

Less is More

Finally, I’d just like to say that it’s perfectly okay to not have as much time for your workout as you planned, but what you shouldn’t do is call off the whole workout because of it. Go in there anyway, exercise for 20 minutes, even 15 minutes, just don’t call it off. Consistency is the most important aspect of starting an efficient exercise routine, and if you don’t have consistency in the beginning, chances are that you’re going to quit somewhere along the line.

About The Author

Vanessa Davis is a 32-year-old fitness enthusiast, mother of two and content writer at www.diet.st. She's originally from Long Island, New York, and when she isn't cooking up some new health and fitness article, she enjoys doing yoga and figuring out new, delicious organic-based recipes for herself and her kids.